He's not yelling. Remy yelling would actually be less alarming because Remy yells about ordinary things constantly. This is Remy's focused voice, clipped, direct, all the usual humor stripped out of it, which means something is actually wrong.
I'm out of bed and pulling boots on before I'm fully awake.
I get outside to find Remy already moving toward the horse barn at a pace that confirms the situation. The night is dark and warm, thick with cricket noise. The kind of Texas night that feels close around you. Remy hits me with the facts on the way to the barn.
Biscuit is colicky.
I know enough about horses now to know that colic in a horse is serious. Not a stomachache in the human sense. The kind of thing that can turn dangerous fast if it's not handled correctly. I know this from experience and from the relevant chapter, which for once I am not embarrassed to have read.
The barn lights are already on when we get there.
Laney is already there.
I don't know how she got there before us because her cabin is further from the barn than the ranch house, but she's there in jeans, boots, a shirt she clearly pulled on in a hurry, her hair loose around her shoulders in a way I've only seen a handful of times. She's in Biscuit's stall with her hands on him, talking low, her whole focus on the horse.
She looks up when I come in. "I called Emmy. She's forty minutes out."
"What do you need me to do?"
No hesitation. No checking whether I can handle it. Just: What do you need?
Something in her expression shifts slightly at that. "Keep him walking. He can't be allowed to lie down. I need to get some things from the supply room."
I go into the stall.
Biscuit is not himself. The easy, patient energy I've come to know from our morning sessions is gone, replaced by a restless, uncomfortable tension that communicates itself clearly even to someone who has only been around horses for a few weeks. He shifts his weight, turns to look at his flank, blows hard through his nose.
"Hey," I say quietly. "I've got you."
I get the lead rope on him and start walking him slow circles in the barn aisle the way Laney showed me weeks ago when she was teaching me general horse handling. He resists at first, wanting to stop, wanting to fold down, and I keep the pressure gentle but steady and talk to him the whole time.
Remy appears at the stall door and watches me for a moment. "You're doing the right thing," he says quietly. "Keep him moving, keep talking."
I keep moving.
Keep talking.
Laney comes back with supplies, checks Biscuit's vitals with the focused efficiency she brings to every crisis, talks to Emmy on the phone while simultaneously monitoring the horse. She moves around me in the barn aisle without breaking either conversation. Her hand brushes my arm once as she passes.
She doesn't notice.
I notice.
We work like that for the better part of an hour. Side by side in the warm barn, with Biscuit gradually settling under the steady attention of two people who are not going to leave him alone in this while the night stays quiet outside.
At some point it stops feeling like an emergency.
It starts feeling like something else entirely.
Emmy arrives at half past midnight.
She comes through the barn door with her kit, takes one look at Biscuit, takes one look at me still walking him in slow circles, and says to Laney, "He trained up fast."
"Don't tell him that," Laney says. "His head's already a reasonable size. Let's keep it that way."
I keep walking Biscuit and say nothing because apparently I am capable of tremendous emotional restraint when necessary.
Emmy works through her examination with the brisk confident efficiency I've come to expect from her. She checks gut sounds, takes vitals, asks Laney questions in the shorthand of two people who have done this together before.
